


Five Times Stiles Pulled One from the Oven (and One Time Somebody Else Did)

by Guede



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alive Laura Hale, Alpha Peter Hale, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Baking, Courtship, Crack Treated Seriously, Humor, M/M, Magical Stiles Stilinski, Peter's Sweet Tooth Inadvertently Keeps Him Sane, Sheriff Stilinski's Name is John
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-29
Updated: 2016-01-29
Packaged: 2018-05-17 01:52:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 12,891
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5849320
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Guede/pseuds/Guede
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Five times Stiles’ baking changed the course of history in Beacon Hills (and one time somebody stepped up for him).  Or, Stiles Stilinski: Baking is Magic!</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

In some universes, Stiles’ mother was fond of magic or prophecies or child abuse or knitting. In this one, she likes baking.

She started with an Easy-Bake oven when she was five, which she kept with her even after she’d graduated to real ovens, and that toy stayed with her through three cars, five moves, and six failed relationships. When the frame finally cracked beyond the ability of duct tape to patch, thanks to John’s buddies being a little rough with their last move, she’d smiled gently through John’s endless apologies. And then she’d gone into the bathroom and had a little crying fit.

She bakes every weekend, so that Stiles’ first waking moments were filled with the smell of yeast and flour and browning dough. He used to play with (clean) wooden spoons and plastic measuring cups, and when he was old enough (terrifyingly young), he held the bowl still for her while she stirred or kneaded. A little after that, once she’d gotten used to the idea that her son was a tiny, babbling genius who was going to learn anyway, she started teaching him math using baking ratios and cooking timers.

So when Claudia brings in the Easy-Bake oven, it’s already a little juvenile for Stiles. But he’s still a little small to carry hot trays and heavy ceramic mixing bowls by himself, and she knows by now that his smarts don’t extend to figuring out how to keep himself safe. And well, she got a little nostalgic, seeing the boxes in the toy aisle.

“Kids at school are going to tease him,” John observes, watching her rip off the tape and lift out the oven.

It’s a lot pinker than she remembers, she’ll admit. But Claudia’s never been one to stay within the lines other people draw, and she can already see that in Stiles. “Well, you’re going to make sure he knows how to deal with that, aren’t you?” she says. 

She glances at him and John silently raises his coffee mug, both conceding and promising, and she smiles as she turns back. Her husband, he’s a good man. A pragmatist, but he’s never going to let that stop him from trying to make the world better.

Stiles is immediately fascinated by the Easy-Bake, and they end up baking his first batch right there on the living room floor. “It’s done!” he says gleefully, poking at the tiny pan. “It’s magic!”

“Good job,” Claudia says. She kisses his temple and pulls his hand away from the hot little light at the back of the oven. “And yes, it is, Stiles. You remember that. Because a lot of people are going to tell you different, but baking _is_ magic. And as long as you can bake, you’ll be all right.”

What Claudia really means is (thinking of the woman at work who just that morning sneered at her for eating a delicious homemade croissant instead of carrot sticks), don’t let people talk you out of what you love just for fads. Things are only as bad as you let them get, and you shouldn’t let your mistakes get mixed up with what you love.

As it turns out, she’s not too far off. But she’s not exactly on point either.


	2. Cream Biscuits

Stiles is at home by himself because that’s how the schedule worked out between his dad’s work and his mom’s work and the specialist doctors that his parents are driving over to Sacramento to see. It’s just a day trip, and he is _very_ responsible, and so he’s being trusted to watch himself and be careful and not burn the house down before they come back.

The last one’s pretty irritating, considering he hasn’t set anything on fire since his parents bought him that awesome chef’s thermometer and now he doesn’t have to just eyeball frying oil and sugar syrup. But they’re stressed out and in a hurry, and he really, really doesn’t want them to call a babysitter (even if it’s Melissa McCall, because he loves her but she’s always saying she’s on a diet and then taking his goods on the sly), so he lets that one slide.

He bakes instead. He and his mom went digging in the attic the other day and sure, they’d missed dinner and left the downstairs lights off and his dad had been frantic before he’d found them, thinking they’d gone missing. Frantic and then mad but—

Anyway. They found a couple old cookbooks and one of them’s so ancient the thing is just a bunch of greasy paper held together with a rotting string, but it’s got a biscuit recipe. The kind of recipe where it’s just a couple of sentences with no ingredients list and barely any instructions and definitely no metric system, but that’s why Stiles decides to tackle it. He’s bored, and he and his dad both like biscuits in the morning, and if he just used one of his usual cookbooks, he’d finish up with four hours to go before his parents come home.

So Stiles works out the recipe. It takes him nine batches (he’s not counting the mixes that didn’t make it to the oven), and he uses up all the flour in the house, and also, runs out of counter space to cool the biscuits on.

He doesn’t want to mess up any other rooms in the house—as is, he’s just hoping he can scale the kitchen back from disaster area to dirty before his parents return—and it’s a nice day, and they have patio furniture, so Stiles starts putting platters of biscuits outside.

When he’s taking out the ninth batch, he realizes that somebody else has been making free with the buffet. “Hey!”

The guy looks up, blinking, half a biscuit sticking out of his mouth and dribbling crumbs. He’s kind of old—not as old as Stiles’ dad, but definitely older than high school. Stiles immediately steps back to the door, stranger danger and cop’s kid and all that, and mentally notes down particulars: no visible weapons, a little shorter than Dad, similar build, dark hair, kind of wavy, blue eyes, grey shirt, jeans, nice sneakers. He looks familiar, so definitely a local, but Stiles isn’t sure he knows the guy’s name.

“Oh,” the guy says. He points to the biscuits. “These yours?”

He’s also eyeing the tray Stiles is clutching, which doesn’t make Stiles feel much better. Stiles is almost positive that this batch is _perfect_ , and he’d like a chance to check that before he gets robbed. “Yeah, why?”

The guy blinks a few times. He looks at Stiles, then at the biscuits on the table. Then back. “I meant, did you make them?”

“Well, what does it look like?” Stiles says. Because he knows he’s got flour all over, and burnt dough under his nails from scraping a failed batch off the pan.

Weirdly, the guy sniffs. Stiles frowns and is about to mention that his dad is a _cop_ when the guy blinks again, nods absently, and then…picks up another biscuit. And eats it. “This one’s a little dense,” he says. “I think you got it wrong.”

“It’s called trial and error,” Stiles says, rolling his eyes. And then, he’s not quite sure why, he grabs a biscuit from the latest batch and tosses it to the guy.

Who catches it neatly, pulls it open to check out the inside and then sniffs. He blinks, and then he just shoves his nose into the half-opened biscuit and inhales and…and it is _so_ weird, Stiles recognizes this is not normal behavior, but the guy pulls the biscuit away and smiles and the way he smiles, like it _hurts_ he’s so happy, Stiles just knows this is the batch.

“Delicious,” the man mumbles, stuffing his mouth with the broken halves. “Perfect. Perfect, my God, tastes like clouds…”

“You’re welcome,” Stiles says. Pulling the tray of remaining biscuits towards him as he steps into the house.

The man looks up and—he’s just so weird. He just looks at Stiles and Stiles feels the hair on the back of his neck stand up and he’s just, he feels like he’s in a cold sweat all of a sudden and it’s not like the man did anything really scary. All the guy is doing is looking. Stiles has seen creepier in the police station.

“I _just_ did these,” Stiles says, clutching his tray even tighter. “I haven’t even gotten one, and you got all of the rest.”

“They weren’t as good,” the guy says.

“Well, fine, here, okay, one more,” Stiles says. He chucks another biscuit at the man, then swings the tray to the side so he can shut and lock the door. “Sharing is caring, you’d better be happy now! Or else I’m calling the—”

He looks at the phone in the corner, then winces and looks back outside. And the man is gone.

Stiles edges back to the doorway and peeks around. When he doesn’t see anybody, he…shuts and locks the door anyway, and then he eats a biscuit. And it is so good that he actually forgets about the guy. And about saving the rest for his parents. And, honestly, about the biscuits outside, which are gross ant-ridden lumps by the time his dad finishes scolding him and sends him back out to get the trays.

But the biscuits, okay? They’re _magical_.

* * *

Peter was passing by the Stilinski house because he was avoiding hunters and his family, and he was bored. And it smelled amazing. And all those defenseless little biscuits, just sitting there, calling to him.

He eats the second one as he’s strolling back home, and he supposes it’s why he’s in a relatively good mood when he runs into his nephew. Derek’s been annoyingly absent lately, distracted with something and unavailable for Peter to bother (and therefore bother his sister, who is far too lax with the child), but now that he’s here, he’s…sullen and quiet and continually flicking suspicious looks at Peter.

In some universes, Peter insults Derek, or leaves him and takes a different way home, or just smirks.

In this universe, Peter sighs and asks, “Something the matter?”

“You have stuff all over your mouth,” Derek says. He watches Peter rub off the crumbs and then carefully lick them up—because even a crumb is too good to waste—and then continues to look shifty.

Sharing is caring, Peter remembers, and then rolls his eyes. But, well, he’s curious now. “Yes?”

“I—uh, so what if—I think I—this girl—” Derek stammers. He’s suddenly all motion, jerking his head and twitching his hands, smelling like lust and confusion and fear.

It’s probably just some silly crush of Derek’s again, but Peter snorts, clearing out his nephew’s muddled scent, and then smells the last of the biscuit on his fingers. “Just spit it out, Derek. Who is it?”

So in _this_ universe, Derek mentions to Peter that he’s dating this older woman, who wanted to know about the family reunion, and he doesn’t know much about her but he knows she’s not a werewolf. And she asked a lot of questions about the reunion, and Peter normally doesn’t pay attention to anything about his nephew’s life but when he hears this, he feels a little unsettled.

It’s irritating. It wipes away the warm glow of satisfaction from the biscuits, and so, still irritated, he takes them straight home and makes Derek tell Talia. And then he and Talia make Derek show them what this woman looks like. Derek doesn’t know the Argents—again, Peter despairs, his sister is virtually feeding her children to the hunters—but Talia and Peter certainly do.

Kate Argent leaves town very suddenly, and Derek is dispatched to a werewolf-haven boarding school on the East Coast to finish high school, along with his sister Laura, who transfers to NYU so she can keep an eye on him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm not a baker, so I haven't tested any of the recipes linked off these chapters. However, I love food writing and these were certainly inspirational pieces for me.
> 
> This chapter: [Cream Biscuits](http://www.seriouseats.com/2014/06/how-to-make-light-and-tender-cream-biscuits.html>) at Serious Eats.


	3. Chocolate-Chip Cookies

After Stiles’ mom died, Melissa McCall started coming over to check on Stiles and his dad. Stiles’ dad put up some resistance about how she’s already got it rough, holding down her nurse job and taking care of Scott, and Melissa got devious and so Stiles and Scott start volunteering at the children’s ward in the hospital whenever they don’t have after-school stuff. Melissa and Stiles’ dad take turns driving them home at night, depending on when Melissa pulls a night shift, and Stiles and Scott get to hang out and Stiles gets to not sit around and stare at his mom’s things, or try to not hear his dad crying, so much.

When Stiles is home, he ends up baking a lot, because it’s something to do, and also, he has his own set of tools so he doesn’t have to pull out his mom’s. He bakes a lot of cookies that first year. They’re fast and easy, they don’t need a lot of ingredients or weird, expensive gadgets, there are an endless number of different recipes to try, and he can always get rid of the extras by bringing them to the hospital. Which in turn gets him good with basically everybody. Even the diabetics.

So the night that the Hale house burns down, Stiles is actually in the breakroom just off the ER, passing around a box of snickerdoodles, when suddenly ambulances blare up and people start shouting and a friendly radiology tech shoos him into a stairwell to sneak back to the children’s ward. A friend of Stiles’ dad takes him and Scott home for the night, since Stiles’ dad is busy too.

Said friend loves cookies, and is completely happy to let Stiles take over his kitchen and bake till his dad finally gets free to get him. That’s late Friday night.

Stiles and Scott don’t volunteer on the weekends, but Stiles’ father takes one look at the teetering stack of Tupperware Stiles comes home with, and then takes Stiles along with him to the hospital on Sunday, when he goes to try and interview survivors and next-of-kin.

As soon as they show up, Stiles’ dad gets sucked into a huge knot of people—the Hales had been having a house party, and Talia Hale had recently begun donating a lot of money around town so the party had been very well-attended by a lot of prominent local families—and Stiles gets sort of shoved to the periphery and then forgotten. Which is fine by him.

He drops a box of cookies off with the children’s ward, and then another in the breakroom. Gets rid of two more in the long-term care ward, but after that he’s basically maxed out his regular spots (considering he only just brought cookies in two days before), so he’s kind of wandering around with his last box when he runs into a very weird group in one of the back stairwells. There’s a girl, maybe college-age, and a younger guy trying to carry a wheelchair between them. The wheelchair has a passed-out guy with tubes sticking out of him and bandages all over, and what the bandages don’t cover doesn’t look really great.

“What are you doing?” Stiles says. “Hey, you’re gonna hurt him!”

The guy immediately drops his side of the wheelchair—the girl hisses at him but the wheelchair stays _off_ the ground—and snarls at Stiles. Like animal snarls. Like his eyes glow and he kind of has fangs for a second, and Stiles yelps and is totally about to just run like hell when the guy in the wheelchair sniffs loudly.

The girl and the other guy freeze. Then the girl, who’s been holding up the wheelchair this _entire_ time, puts that carefully down and stares at the guy in it. She’s got blackish streaks under her eyes, like her mascara was running and she didn’t get it all cleaned off. “Peter?” she says, shaking.

Peter— _Hale_ , right—doesn’t move. Stiles is freaked out, quite justifiably, in his opinion, but he’s…he’s pretty sure now that these two aren’t trying to kidnap the sick guy for bad reasons. And yeah, okay, he’s curious.

He pulls the lid off the cookies. The popping noise makes the younger guy swing back towards him, in case Stiles forgot that he’s not sure they aren’t going to hurt _him_ , but then Peter twitches. Sniffs again.

“Is he still in a coma?” the guy asks the girl.

“I don’t know,” the girl says. She looks at Stiles, then at Peter. Then she gives herself a hard shake, reaches into her pocket, and pulls out her wallet. “Whatever, we need to go. Look, kid, if you give me those cookies and forget you saw any of this, I’ll give you…um, a hundred dollars.”

The guy’s already on his way down the stairs. He’s big and angry-looking, and when he reaches for the cookies, he smiles like he’s going to eat them _and_ Stiles.

Stiles backs way up, till he can’t back up anymore because there’s a stupid wall, and then mentally reminds himself that, if he gets out of this alive, he is so making his dad give him a cell phone. “Wait, wait, what are you doing? He’s hurt, you can’t take him out of here, he needs a doctor—”

“He _needs_ to not get killed,” the guy says. He grabs at the cookies.

Stiles slaps the lid back on, then shoves the box under his butt and sits on it. The guy looks disbelievingly down at him, then reaches with both arms towards Stiles.

“I’m gonna scream,” Stiles says. “I’m gonna scream, and my dad’s a cop and wait if you’re Hales too then he’s looking for you and—”

“Derek!” the girl snaps, just as Derek lunges and slaps his hand over Stiles’ mouth. “Derek, I swear to _God_ I will toss you over the rail and carry Peter down while you’re heal—”

“I’m not hurting him!” Derek snaps back over his shoulder. He does only have his hand on Stiles, but he’s pushing really hard. And his eyes do that glowy thing when Stiles bites him. He whips his head back around, keeps his hand on, and does some…growl thing in his throat, a real, honest, growl, just like a dog. “Listen. You shut up, or—or—”

The girl storms down and yanks Derek off. “Jesus Christ,” she says, glaring at him. Then she turns back to Stiles. She’s trying to smile and it’s not that convincing. “Listen, Peter’s our uncle, we’re family, we’re allowed to sign him out. I mean, I don’t know if you know the law, but—”

“My dad’s a cop and I volunteer here,” Stiles snorts. “And you do _not_ look like you signed him out.”

“Well, because that’s a great idea when everybody out there is trying to kill us!” the guy snarls.

“Derek, you want to just shift for him already? Because that’s just about the only thing you haven’t done,” the girl mutters. “And—and kid—”

“Stiles,” Stiles says.

The girl pauses. Then she smiles again, a little less stiffly. “I’m Laura. Laura Hale. And Derek’s my brother, and I know this looks bad, and I know you’re just trying to do the right thing, but we really are in danger. If Peter stays here, I don’t know if he’ll see tomorrow, and our mom and sister and everybody else is already dead, okay? We have to get him out.”

She lifts her hand like she’s going to touch his shoulder or something, then jerks it back as her eyes start to tear up. Her brother presses his lips together, looking at her, and then flinches and looks up like he heard something. He darts back up the stairs to stand by Peter, still looking up the stairs.

“It’s just, you don’t want him to die, right?” Laura says. She scrubs at her eye, mutters an apology to Stiles about it, for some reason, and then looks straight on at him. “He didn’t do anything to you.”

“I think he ate my biscuits once,” Stiles says. Then rubs his own eye in irritation as she looks at him funny. “I mean—no. But I don’t see—look, my dad, I’m sure he’s not trying to kill you. He’s a cop, if you’re really worried, I can get him and you can tell him and he’ll get people to watch your uncle.”

“We don’t know that, we already caught that fucking janitor,” Derek says. He takes a step like he’s going to go past Peter, then shifts back. He glances at Laura and Stiles. “Come on already, they’re going to notice he’s gone.”

“We can’t trust anybody,” Laura says. “I mean, I’m sure your dad, he’s a nice person. But you don’t…look, it’s really complicated and the best thing you can do is—is give me those cookies, and pretend you didn’t see us, and—”

“You know this door goes out into the lot where the off-duty ambulances park, right?” Stiles says. “They’re going to see you.”

Derek snarls again, then whirls and stalks back and forth on the landing. “Okay, well, what? If you really want to help us.”

“I…okay, look, if you do one thing for me, I’ll show you how to get out, and I’ll give you the cookies for free,” Stiles says. He looks at Laura. “Just come by my house. There’s a table in the backyard, I’ll put more cookies out on it for you.”

Laura looks amused, annoyed, and fretful all at once. She wipes at her eyes again, then tugs at her hair as Derek kicks at the concrete floor. “You’re gonna have your dad there, aren’t you?”

“Just, he can help,” Stiles says. “That’s his job. He’s going to help, he’s not going to kill you. And—and anyway, there are only five cookies left in here. I think you’re gonna need more than that. Aren’t you?”

Her eyes drop to the box. She chews her lip, then starts to stand up. Then catches herself and sinks back, staring at the box some more. Laura mutters something to herself about not being ready period, let alone for calls like this, and then flinches as Derek kicks the floor again.

She turns to yell at Derek and Stiles cracks the lid open, sticks his hand into the box and crumbles a cookie. In the wheelchair, Peter sniffs and then makes a noise that Stiles can barely hear, but that has Derek suddenly crowding over him, holding him up and asking urgently whether it was Kate.

“Derek, get _off_ , he’s—” Laura gets up on one foot, then abruptly twists back “—okay, deal, now give me the fucking cookies.”

Stiles gives her the cookies. Then shows them to a stairwell that the nurses use for unscheduled smoking breaks. Of course, nobody’s got time for that today, so they’re free and clear to just throw a jacket over Peter and wheel him calmly into the lot.

So they drive off, and Stiles is…belatedly kicking himself for not getting a phone number, at least. He wasn’t thinking; he was just going with it.

Anyway, he goes back in, and finds his dad, and hands him the very last cookie—which Stiles had been saving for himself, but desperate times and all that—and sort of explains what happened. Sort of. He leaves out the stuff about the glowy eyes and the fangs. He wants his dad to at least semi-believe him, after all.

“I don’t know if they’re actually going to come back or not,” Stiles finishes up. “But I just…I just didn’t want them to think nobody would help them. You know, because—because that’s what Mom thought at the end. That’s what she kept saying.”

His dad looks at him for a long time, and then suddenly wraps him up in a hard, tight hug. “I know, son,” he tells Stiles. “I know, and you did all right. Now, don’t worry about it, there’s nothing we can do now. Let’s just go home.”

And they do, and Stiles doesn’t even get grounded. A couple days later, when he’s thinking more clearly, he bookmarks that recipe for sick days.

* * *

Even years later, Laura can’t really pin down why she decided to keep her bargain with Stiles. By all rights she and Derek should’ve floored the accelerator and been a couple states away (she is _terrified_ , okay, she is an alpha but she feels like the most beaten, weak omega ever and it’s all she can do to just not crawl into a hole and not come out), but no, she drops him and Peter off in a hotel and then turns around, and shows up in the Stilinski backyard that night.

There’s a plate of cookies. And a cop. And Laura has a mild fit of insanity. She blames it on the Argents coming back and bribing some asshole to carry a suitcase firebomb into her family home. That, and the cookie she’s eating when John Stilinski finally stops making awkward consolatory noises and looks her in the eye.

“So you want to tell me why you think people want to kill you?” he says.

Laura shifts. To John’s credit, he doesn’t immediately shoot her, though his hand doesn’t leave his gun the whole rest of the time they talk, and she gets to shift back and resume eating her cookie as she explains about werewolves and hunters and flat-out psychos who just want to wipe out anybody who crosses their family, even if that was because their daughter could be charged with statutory rape.

John…obviously has a hard time buying it all, but once Laura mentions rape charges, his cop habits or whatever switch on and he starts asking questions. She doesn’t have a lot of time, but she gives him some stuff to look into, and then he gives her his phone number. And the cookies.

“Stiles made them for you, you should get them,” he says. He pauses, and then makes an odd face at them, proud and sort of wary at the same time. “And…I don’t know, but your uncle coming out of his coma is probably the least weird thing I’ve heard about them. The stuff Stiles can bake, well…I’ve seen some things. Kind of makes werewolves easier to believe.”

“Um, thanks,” Laura says, because she’s got to go.

She rejoins Derek and Peter, and they head for New York. Every day they crumble a bit of cookie in front of Peter and he twitches, but he’s healing very slow, and they don’t have that many, even with the extra batch she got from John.

Who hasn’t sent cops after her or anything, and who appears to be turning up a pretty huge bribery and murder scandal, judging by the news coverage. So, the day they hit the second-to-last cookie, Laura sucks it up and calls John.

They talk about the case some, and then she says she should send them back the plate, just off-hand, because talking about what happened makes Laura shaky as hell and she needs a break before she gives herself away. John’s silent for a few seconds, and then he gives her an address.

She mails him the plate.

He mails her a fresh box of cookies. Overnight.

Peter gets better.

“What the hell do you think he puts in them?” Derek mutters, polishing off one.

“No idea, bro,” Laura says, eating another. She wipes crumbs off Peter’s weakly-moving lips, then splits up her cookie and feeds him half of it. “But they’re good, aren’t they?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thoroughly tested variations on [chocolate chip cookies](http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/wordofmouth/2012/apr/25/how-to-cook-perfect-chocolate-chip-cookies) from The Guardian's Felicity Cloake.
> 
> So this is set about a year after when the Hale fire happened in canon. What happens is Kate and Gerard try again, but this time the arson conspiracy's a lot bigger, because Talia's started defensively networking, and so it's much more obvious to Derek and Laura (when they get to town) that any Hales left there will get killed off. Also, I figure they'll feel a little more kindly towards Peter for averting the first fire.


	4. Ciabatta Bread

Stiles’ dad gets promoted on the strength of his work on the Hale fire, and even has some recruiters from the FBI asking if he’s considered switching to the feds, and it’s pretty awesome. And then things get weird.

He starts having random people call him up for help, for cases that Stiles doesn’t even think make it into the official records, let alone that he’ll tell Stiles about. This veterinarian named Alan Deaton comes by a lot, and then Melissa has a fight with Stiles’ dad that results in her trying to keep Scott away, and when Stiles and Scott sneak out to meet up in the preserve one night, they get caught and all hell breaks loose and they’re grounded for _weeks_. On the other hand, Melissa and his dad start talking to each other again, and Stiles is pretty sure she’s helping his dad hide stuff.

This guy named Chris Argent moves to town. He’s apparently the son of Gerard Argent, and therefore Kate Argent’s brother, and so Dad should hate the guy’s guts. But he knocks on their door the first day he’s in Beacon Hills, introduces himself, apologizes for the death threats they had to deal with before Gerard and Kate got killed in a police shootout, and then asks to speak in private. And then _he’s_ hanging around Stiles’ dad too.

He’s got a daughter, Allison, who Scott is immediately in love with, and suddenly Stiles has a lovesick best friend who is totally ignoring all the parental shenanigans around them. He does seem less murderous than the rest of his family, but Stiles still doesn’t really trust him, and so one week when Chris is acting especially shifty, bringing Dad stuff wrapped in plastic and calling late at night and buying an awful lot of cleaners at the supermarket, Stiles talks Scott into following the adults.

Chris and Stiles’ dad go into the preserve. They meet with this guy who turns into a giant hairy monster and attacks them, and things go from weird to terrifying.

Scott gets bitten.

Stiles finds out about werewolves.

More importantly, Stiles finds out that his _dad_ has known about werewolves for a while, and that the glowy eyes and fangs and crazy strength the Hales had, which Stiles had sort of convinced himself was just from exhaustion over walking through the whole hospital twice, are related to that. Are _more_ than related to that, and in fact, Stiles’ actions directly led to his father learning about werewolves and not telling him and God knows what his dad’s been up to and he is so angry he almost doesn’t think about how frightened he is, thinking about that.

They have a stupid open-floor plan first floor so Stiles can’t lock his father out of the kitchen, but he doesn’t talk to his dad and just bakes and bakes and bakes till his dad gets the point and leaves. And then he bakes some more.

He bakes bread. Because that needs to rest so he has time to look up stuff online in between rises, and he’s got a ton of research to catch up on, and God, that just makes him more mad. The _one_ time he leaves it alone. The one time. And his dad. Just. Doesn’t tell him.

Stiles runs out of counter space again. He’s going to put the extras on the backyard table to cool, except Chris Argent is sitting there.

“You shouldn’t blame your—” Chris starts.

Stiles goes back inside, and bakes and researches some more. He stacks bread in the laundry room on the washer and dryer.

Two hours later, he goes into the backyard again and Chris is still there. “This is dangerous,” Chris says. “My daughter doesn’t even—”

“Well, you’re a bad father, and she’s going to now that you’re gonna kill Scott just for your screw-up,” Stiles says, going back inside.

The laundry room fills up and Stiles empties out some boxes of old science fair stuff and lines them with paper towels and puts bread in them. He also moves from lycanthropy to magic, because now that he thinks about it, Dr. Deaton knows an awful lot of dead languages and random mythology.

Two hours later. “It’s past ten, Allison’s going to hate you just for sitting at my house all night,” Stiles says.

“We’re not going to kill Scott,” Chris sighs. “That’s what—we used to do that, but—”

“That’s very reassuring,” Stiles says. “You _used_ to kill teenagers just because of your stupid code, but now you don’t. What, did nobody ever point out to you before that they’ve got family and friends who might miss them? And who came up with this code anyway? Because I don’t believe your stuff about bringing them in alive either. What’d you do then, just lock them up forever? Equally as awesome, captive teenage werewolves. Sounds like daytime talk show gold to me.”

Chris winces. But he shuts up and just sits there, and…and Stiles really is running out of space in the house, so he goes ahead and he spreads paper towels over the part of the table Chris isn’t using.

“Also, you don’t get these,” Stiles mutters, noticing Chris’ hungry glances. “You helped my dad almost get killed, and you got Scott hurt. You don’t _ever_ get bread.”

“Stiles,” Chris starts, sounding very weary and apologetic.

Something rustles in the bushes and Chris immediately snaps around and pulls out the giant _gun_ he’d been hiding somewhere. He points it at the woods beyond the backyard while reaching for his phone with his other hand.

“Stiles, you need to go back inside,” he barks.

“I thought you got him,” Stiles says.

Chris starts to swear and then catches himself. He doesn’t turn around. “Deucalion doesn’t run by himself, he has a—just get inside, would you?”

“Is this because he wants his pack member?” Stiles says. “Because some of the research I was doing—”

“This is why your dad didn’t want to tell you!” Chris snaps. “Because you’d want to be involved!”

“Also, you didn’t answer whether you got him,” Stiles says. “And go to hell, of course I do, he’s my dad and he’s all I have left! Or do you not get that? I mean, since you just kill people left and right, like the rest of your fam—”

Stiles isn’t completely self-destructive, or stupid. Sure, he’s yelling at Chris, but he’s also backing up towards the house, and he’s keeping an eye on the woods. If something comes out, he’ll stop yelling. But also, stuff rustles in the woods all the time, and the number of times it’s turned out to be a werewolf instead of a deer or _all the other things that live in the preserve_ is really low, and he has no idea what Chris is still doing here and he’s just not very convinced of the guy’s judgment, all right?

Besides, the werewolf comes over the roof of the house. Stiles sees a weird shadow falling over him and spins around and screams. And throws his armful of bread at it.

The werewolf is thrown enough by that that it twists and lands next to Stiles instead of on him, and then Chris shoots it. Repeatedly.

There’s blood on the ground, on the bread, on the house. There are _bulletholes_ in the house now. There is a dead werewolf at Stiles’ feet.

“Stiles, it’s just—it’s just this is a lot more complicated than it looks and no father wants their kid to get hurt,” Chris says, coming over. He reaches out and…pulls Stiles back, and then tries to cover Stiles’ eyes as he shoots the werewolf twice more in the head. Then he puts his hand down and turns around and looks at Stiles. “That’s why your dad’s sitting at Scott’s place, and I’m over here, all right? He and Mel-Scott’s mom are trying to make sure Scott doesn’t hurt himself, and I’m trying to make up for my mistake by making sure you don’t get killed before Scott’s…well, we’re working on it.”

“Well, screw you, he’s my best friend and we’re not _working_ on it, we’re going to solve it,” Stiles says. Then he breathes in, and it comes up a little fast. He feels dizzy and for a second he’s afraid his panic attacks are back and he’s going to sit down except right, blood. Dead werewolf.

He looks at it. He feels pretty sick. But he makes himself look at it, because, he tells himself, that is not _ever_ going to be Scott. He’s not sure what he has to do about it yet, but he knows that.

“Yeah, your dad said pretty much the same thing,” Chris says. He sounds sort of amused, except when Stiles looks over, he’s grimacing at the body. “He’s a smart guy, your dad. He doesn’t trust me right now around Scott either.”

“You did just kill a werewolf in his backyard,” Stiles says.

Chris grimaces again, then holsters his gun and wipes at some blood on his face. “I just want to stop doing this,” he says, gesturing at the werewolf. He pauses, then pulls his phone out and texts somebody. “Don’t get me wrong, Stiles. That’s Ennis, and if you feel sorry for him, he killed his entire pack, and about half of them were blood family. But I don’t—I never did this just to kill people. And these days I’d really like to be able to give kids like your friend a chance, all right? But it’s just…it’s hard. Werewolves, especially ones who just turned, they can really hurt someone. And maybe they don’t mean to, but—”

Stiles is listening, but also, he still has blood on him. He—he just—he looks around, and he sees the towels he put on the table. So he’s picking up a non-bloody loaf to get at them, and then Chris keeps going about how Scott will have to be chained up till they figure out how to keep him under control and other horrible stuff and Stiles just isn’t going to listen to that.

He walks back over and he jabs the bread at Chris. Who looks at him, trailing off mid-medieval torture whatever, and then looks at the bread as Stiles pokes him again.

“Just eat it,” Stiles says.

Chris looks a little weirded out, but he feels guilty or whatever and anyway, he breaks off a chunk and eats it. Stiles has a piece too, while they look at the dead body. He always feels better after he eats a baked good, and he needed Chris to just shut up and give him a second to think, and it was handy.

“We need to get rid of this, and clean up,” Stiles says when he’s done. “And then you’re going to give me everything you have on werewolves, and I’m going to learn this stuff. And if it’s dangerous, you’re going to explain what that means so I don’t accidentally do something. And then we’re going to help Scott.”

“It’d probably help if we had werewolves around who wouldn’t kill us, they could at least work with him,” Chris mutters. He pauses and a very weird expression goes over his face, sort of disgusted with himself and also resigned and just a little horrified. Then he takes a deep breath, and lifts his phone again. “Shit, I can’t believe I’m…listen, Stiles, I’ll pitch in, but can you just—please don’t tell Allison. I want to do that myself.”

Stiles looks at him, and then pulls the bread away from Chris’ pinching fingers. Chris glances down, like he’s surprised himself to see what his hand is doing, and then he looks a little disappointed.

“That was a one-time deal,” Stiles says. “You actually show me you’re helping Scott, _then_ you get more bread. And…so you’re going to call Dad and point out that we already know werewolves, right? Well, I mean, _you_ guys do.”

“Stiles, we told you, that wasn’t an option, they were never going to come over with me in town but I’ll…I’ll talk to Laura. I’ll try, all right?” Chris mutters. “But Allison—please. I just—I should be the one.”

“Fine, whatever, but it’d better be sometime this century,” Stiles says, stalking back inside. “And don’t eat any of the bread. I’m washing off and I’m coming right back out to get it, and I’m counting them.”

Chris sighs. “Deal.”

* * *

“Chris Argent wants us to come back to Beacon Hills,” Laura says, walking in. “He says the Alpha pack’s moved in, and Deucalion bit a kid who turned and needs help with it. Well, and also, any help with killing the Alphas—they got Ennis, by the way—would be greatly appreciated.”

Derek rolls over and looks at her. “That’s not funny, Laura.”

Peter doesn’t even roll over. He’s been getting moody again—he’s more or less healed in the body these days, but he’s a lot angrier and more bitter than he used to be, and they had to move so quick this last time that they missed the usual box of cookies from John. “No. He can sit in his family’s shit for all I care.”

Laura takes a deep breath. “Yeah, that’s what I said, but he had John Stilinski on the phone with him, and also—well, this came in the mail today. Along with an apology card.”

She unzips the bag, then pushes the top third of the bread loaf out. Peter’s already sitting up and sniffing. “How does Chris Argent know the Stilinskis?” he says.

“Well, apparently he’s brighter than Kate, and also, this kid who got bit is Stiles’ best friend,” Laura says. She tears off some of the bread, trying to not drool all over it, and makes herself toss it to Peter. Then she eats some herself.

It’s got a thick, crunchy, crust, with a soft inside that just kind of melts in the mouth, leaving behind tasty, salty bits of olives and sweet-sour onions and this ridiculously rich cheesy flavor. The bread is so good that Laura almost doesn’t notice Derek coming up and yanking off half the loaf.

“Fine, here,” Derek says, giving half of that to a very glowy-eyed, very snarly Peter. “Jesus.”

“If you can’t appreciate it, you don’t deserve to have it,” Peter mumbles, in between bites and muffled moans. “As for the Stilinskis, well, I told you this would happen if we never went back. Everyone thinks the town’s wide open now.”

When Peter said that, it was in the middle of yet another argument with Laura about why she isn’t expanding their pack. He actually does agree with her that there’s no point in going back in their current shape; he just keeps insisting that they’d be stronger if there were more of them. She’s not so sure of that, considering how they came off the last time they ran up against the Alpha pack; if they can’t keep themselves together, and they at least are born family, trying to integrate a bitten’s just a recipe for disaster. 

Speaking of, she’s also not that sure that adding Chris Argent and a teenage werewolf and whoever else John’s got is going to improve the odds that much. But…well, they owe the Stilinskis. And…

“We’re not doing it for the food,” Derek mutters. “Right?”

“It’s a better reason than your silly crush on Kate Argent,” Peter says, getting up. “At least this means we won’t have to worry about dying from your cooking while we’re there.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Paul Hollywood's [Ciabatta bread](http://paulhollywood.com/recipes/ciabatta/).
> 
> To be clear, Stiles was still very young when Laura and Derek sneaked Peter out (early teens) so I think it's plausible that, while he's curious, he's both a little too scared and also a little too easily distracted (let's say this is his pre-ADD meds days, too) by other things to really follow up on the weirdness. But he keeps it in mind and all; it's just that as an adult, with the police station's resources at his disposal, John Stilinski is better than his son at hiding stuff.
> 
> In this universe, Victoria died before Chris and Allison moved to Beacon Hills.


	5. Pies and Tarts

Stiles bones up on werewolves and gets Scott’s head straight within the week ( _hah_ , hundreds of years of hunter knowledge). Predictably, the Hales show up a day later.

They’re still helpful, but mostly with chasing around the Alpha pack. Seeing as in that situation, being violent (Derek), manipulative (Laura) and plain vengeful (Peter) is actually useful. Not so much for giving a new-bitten teenage werewolf a couple pointers in how not to maul his girlfriend, or freak out his mom. So okay, Stiles is starting to see that Chris Argent had a point or two.

He still doesn’t trust the guy. Or the Hales, especially after they try to use Scott to lure Deucalion in without mentioning that to people. Or, frankly, his own father, who’s promised to be more truthful but who keeps withholding critical information that Stiles needs in order to research this stuff properly. Like, say, that some of the bodies showing up around town aren’t down to werewolves but are actually human goddamn sacrifices? And that Deaton’s sister apparently knows the Alphas? And just, magic in general?

“Statistically speaking, Stiles, you don’t have nearly enough data points—” Lydia starts.

“Lydia, it’s either this or we fake sacrifice _ourselves_ , okay? And don’t start with your denial stuff about all of this. You keep saying that you don’t want to keep seeing dead people, but then you actively _avoid_ trying to figure out how that happens, if you want to talk about insufficient data,” Stiles says, rolling out dough. “Well, when you’re not knowingly banging confirmed werewolves trying to kill the rest of us. Including my dad. Which, you know, _kind of_ killed my crush on you so either get out or pass me the tin.”

She goes quiet. Stiles finishes with the dough and gets it around his pin, and then rolls it out over the last tart pan. He carefully presses it down into the wavy edges, cuts off the extra, and balls all that up for making the lattice strips. Then he sticks that batch of pans in the oven and pops his head out the back door to see where Scott is on the filling. Because they definitely need werewolf strength for that, considering the pounds and pounds of fruit they still have sitting untouched, but Scott doesn’t exactly have a light touch, and he’s even worse with his mom missing. And Stiles doesn’t want his dad to come back to yet another ruined kitchen.

When his dad comes back. When.

“Are you making one of each?” Lydia finally asks, a little more quietly.

“Well, I have no idea what I’m doing, so…yeah. Scatter approach, we’ll just try everything,” Stiles mutters. He rinses out his mixing bowl, wipes it clean, and then is reaching for the flour when she takes the bag from him.

“I’ll make up portions, you mix. If you’re serious about this, you should take a couple tips from mass manufacturing,” Lydia says, getting busy with the cups and scale. “Get an assembly line going.”

Stiles starts to remind her Henry Ford was a racist asshole who probably would be best buddies with a darach, and then…sees her point. Honestly, he probably should’ve thought of that in the first place. He’s slipping.

He misses his dad.

“You really think you’ve got some…some…thing?” Lydia says. She sneaks a look at him while making up identically-sized piles of flour on the counter, and she sounds sort of brittle and hopeful all at the same time. It’s the kind of vulnerable moment he would’ve been dying to get from her, just a few weeks ago, and now he just feels…

He feels like he gets why she feels like that, and it really sucks. And maybe being stupid about post-Jackson boyfriends is understandable, if not excusable. “I guess. I mean, baking’s always—it was my mom’s thing. I never really thought about it being mine, it’s just…somebody had to keep it going after she was gone. But—but weird stuff happens. A lot. And I don’t know, it just seems like, everybody else is showing what they have now, so I might as well throw in mine. And if it gets everybody back okay, then—”

The doorbell rings. Scott’s inside in a second, right by Stiles as he grabs his dad’s spare gun and warily looks out onto the front porch.

They stare for a second, and then they pull open the door. A slightly teary Allison is standing there, crossbow strapped over her back, a huge box of something that clanks in her arms. “I got all the pans I could find around the house, and also, all of the cookbooks in case they’ve got a recipe you don’t have,” she says. “Can I come in?”

“Sure,” Stiles says, stepping aside. “The more the merrier.”

* * *

Peter is kicking himself for missing the darach signs, and for forgetting about the whole symbolic aspect of _three_. As in, _three_ Hales, so even with the bitch’s fondness for Derek, they all end up tied up and waiting around to be bled out for a tree.

Well, till Stiles and his little friends show up. While the Argent girl and Scott play chase with Blake, and the rest of them struggle free of their bonds, Stiles unloads box after box of pies and tarts and methodically smashes them into the Nemeton’s roots, chanting Gaelic and Latin in a horrendous accent. When he gets to what smells like a rhubarb-berry combination, which is heart-rendingly _scrumptious_ , the Nemeton—does something.

“I think it ate her?” Stiles says later. “I mean, the roots just came up and went around her and boom! She went down.”

In lieu of the hospital, because nobody feels up to coming up with a cover story yet, they’ve all congregated at the Stilinski house to clean off and treat their wounds, and yes, eat pie. Because Stiles still has at least twenty that Peter can see, and he thinks he might smell more in the garage.

“So does he have to keep doing this now?” John demands of a still stunned-looking Deaton. “How the hell does this work? And you’d better actually tell me this time, because I’m not having my kid stuck baking pies for a tree his whole life. I’ll rent a backhoe and a flamethrower if I have to—”

Deaton and his darling twice-turncoat sister look alarmed, and promptly start spilling information. And while normally Peter would be all over that—babbling druids don’t come around nearly as often as incompetent ones, sadly—he’s a little distracted by Stiles slipping out of the kitchen, and then the wafting of a pie he hasn’t yet tried coming from the same direction.

“Whoa,” Stiles says, stepping hastily back from Peter. Then he glares, putting a protective arm over the rhubarb-strawberry-something pleasantly citrus delicacy. He kicks shut the garage door behind him and then moves like he’s going to just pass by Peter. “Can’t you wait till I get it to the kitchen?”

“The early wolf gets the best slice,” Peter says, reaching for that golden-brown dome.

The boy actually slaps his hand. Slaps it, and then looks as if Peter should honestly be ashamed of himself. “Listen, okay, I know my dad—got you addicted or whatever, but I didn’t know he was sending them,” he mutters. “He just told me it was boosting morale at the station, and anyway, if you think I’m your personal baker or something, well, go to hell.”

Peter frowns. “That’s rather harsh considering we only came back at your request, as I understand it.”

“I asked for help for _Scott_ ,” Stiles snaps. “And so far, great job you guys have done. Sure, you killed Kali and sent Deucalion packing, but you also almost got all of us killed about a zillion times. And also, you haven’t told me a single thing about werewolves that I didn’t already figure out. Look, you know—if the cookies helped you or whatever, well, I’m glad, and I probably would’ve sent them anyway. But I don’t think you’re helping _me_ much.”

Then he stalks off, for the all of five yards it takes for him to reach the kitchen counter. He still gives Peter a piece, it’s just that that piece is third and one side is slightly lopsided from where the top crust is beginning to dent from the spatula’s cuts, and it’s just not as glorious as a first virgin slice would be. And that is _not_ why Peter ends up staying up researching protective magic on his laptop. Peter is very much looking out for his own wants and desires, he will cheerfully admit that, but he’s not so absurdly petty as to turn his life on end for a mere slice of pie.

Or a teenage boy, however strangely fascinating Stiles might be. He’s certainly not the undersized, brash child Peter remembers—he’s actually rather attractive, in an extremely jailbait with a well-informed, well-armed father way—but he’s still immature and impulsive, with a tendency to get involved in needless heroics. If years of putting up with Derek have taught Peter anything, it’s that his tolerance for such things has risen as much as it’s ever going to.

No, Peter thinks it’s just the challenge Stiles issued him. Hasn’t learned anything about werewolves he didn’t already know, indeed. Well, fine, then Peter’s going to show him a thing or two, and that should more than make up for the basil-lemon curd tart and the bourbon peach pie Peter swiped to munch on while warding the Stilinskis’ perimeter.

* * *

In this universe, the nogitsune trapped under the Nemeton takes significantly longer to escape. There are several possible explanations, but the simplest, perhaps, is that it’s a little difficult, even for a largely incorporeal spirit, to squeeze out of a bloated, well-satiated, evil tree.

Anyway, it gets out and it goes looking for a ready victim. Werewolves are categorically out, and the girl is safely warded. The boy—

—the boy has an odd aura, terribly attractive and repulsive at the same time, rather like the call of a laden dessert cart after an already gut-busting meal, but he’s not only warded up to the metaphorical eyeballs, he’s also shaking out a pile of pie pans and tart tins when the nogitsune finds him. He’s at the curb, working over a trash can, and his foot _does_ slide past the protective barrier. But when the nogitsune reaches out, already weak from the wards, a clump of cherry filling flies from the tin the boy’s currently flapping around.

It hits the nogitsune and the spirit has a brief, intense feeling of luscious sweetness before a horrible burning sensation floods through it. Whimpering, badly wounded, the nogitsune flees back to the relative safety of the tree.

A couple weeks later, hearing of the happenings in Beacon Hills, a hereditary guardian sneaks into the preserve, extracts the still-weak spirit, and takes it away to a more secure location, the town none the wiser.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Rhubarb berry pie](http://www.simplyrecipes.com/recipes/rhubarb_berry_pie/) from Simply Recipes.
> 
> Incidentally, a lot of fruits have strong symbolic/mythological meanings and several were linked with the Celtic pantheon (among other cultures' gods). A fruit offering wasn't unusual, way back in the day.
> 
> I'm not sure why nobody really seems to confront Lydia about her sleeping with werewolves who actually actively murder a classmate of theirs, right in front of them (and before that, helped imprison and drive two classmates mad for a whole summer). But if Stiles' dad is more directly in danger from the Alpha pack from the start, I really don't think Stiles would let that slide.


	6. Pastries

Once Stiles gets the hang of this whole baking magic thing, and his dad stops with the lying, _and_ the Hales are less jackass-y about coming back, things get calmer. Scott leads the lacrosse team to record-breaking victories their senior year, with Allison cheering him on from the stands, and Chris Argent gradually stops wearing a gun around him. Lydia drops the terrible attempt to make herself dumb enough to pass as a soap opera victim—college social dynamics are totally different anyway—and she and Stiles end up pretty good friends. 

Stiles _thinks_ that his dad and Laura Hale might have a thing starting. He’s trying not to pry into it, and he and Derek bond a little over their mutual avoidance of the issue, so Derek starts actually working with them, and that makes night patrols a whole lot easier. And Peter—Peter is still stealing Stiles’ baked goods, but supposedly they keep him from being a total psychotic douchebag, and since he’s _already_ a huge asshole who keeps driving up to their house with bodies in his car trunk, Stiles reluctantly writes off about ten percent of whatever he’s making.

Until Deucalion comes back to town, with a whole new set of trauma-drone alphas. This time, they actually kill him, but not before Peter and Derek alpha up and Scott has some kind of true alpha epiphany and suddenly they have their very own alpha pack.

So that whole thing about the Alpha pack all being equals? Hah, no. Deucalion ran that show, beginning to end. And somebody had to, because if everybody wants to do their own thing, nobody’s listening to anybody and there just isn’t a pack.

Scott tries to talk everybody down. It doesn’t really work. Derek goes at him, and then Laura. Then Derek goes at Peter, who goes at Laura, who runs over to the Stilinski house because alpha Peter outweighs her by a _lot_. Also, nobody told Stiles this was going down so he’s not prepared when she shows up. He’s in the middle of making fucking pastries for his fucking final (food science major, obviously).

“Give me those!” Laura snarls, storming in the back door.

“Hey!” Stiles says, snatching the tray away from her.

She roars at him, claws out, fangs bared, and he doesn’t have mountain ash or a taser or wolfsbane. He’s got éclairs.

Stiles pitches one into her mouth. Werewolves are kind of like dogs in certain areas, most relevantly right now, the one where they snap at whatever goes near them when they’re angry. She snaps, the éclair mostly stays in her mouth, and then she de-wolfs, blinking. “Did you—did you just—” she starts.

Peter roars from outside. By now, Stiles still doesn’t know what’s going on but he gets the picture about rampaging werewolves, and he’s seen that enough times (wolfsbane hallucinations have ruined so many holidays of his) to know how to react to that. He grabs the tray of profiteroles, runs outside, and tilts it into Peter’s face just as Peter lunges up the back steps.

A couple minutes later, Laura is warily watching from the doorway while Stiles sits on the steps, with de-wolfed Peter sitting on the next step down and nibbling thoughtfully on the last clean profiterole. “If you can hold off on the homicide for two seconds, I’ve got tiramisu in the fridge,” Stiles says.

Peter makes a little begging noise into his profiterole, and then shakes himself. He looks down at himself, covered in mud and grass and blood, sprinkled with profiterole crumbs, and then he looks over, from Stiles up to Laura. He looks…he actually looks sort of embarrassed. “I think Deucalion booby-trapped his pack before we killed them,” he says. “I have holes in my memory, and I’m not lying, Lau—”

“Derek’s been saying he’s got a headache for the last day, and he sleepwalked and he hasn’t done that since he was what, five?” Laura says.

“Four and eight months,” Peter says. He eats more profiterole. “We should probably do an exorcism.”

“Well, awesome, let me just call up Allison and we’ll get started on those cake-loaded arrows,” Stiles mutters, getting up.

Peter makes a weird noise again. It’s small and kind of whiny, like Stiles stepped on his tail or something, and when Stiles sits back down, he stops and looks both confused and disgusted with himself. Stiles gets up, and the second his head is higher than Peter’s, Peter makes the noise.

He sits down and looks at Laura, about to ask what’s going on, and she comes out onto the porch, dropping into an awkward squat so her head is lower too. So Stiles has been around werewolves for a couple years, at this point, and he knows stuff even they’ve forgotten. And anyway, they’re basically sticking a giant neon sign over him.

“I don’t mind-control through baking,” he says.

“But you forced a shift,” Laura points out.

Stiles puts his head in his hands. “Yeah, thanks, I totally didn’t miss that or anything, and just, please don’t tell me you’re gonna kill me out of sheer embarrassment, okay? Because it’s not my fault you people decided to anchor yourselves with my baking.”

“That’s not…quite what’s going on,” Peter says slowly. He pinches the bridge of his nose and closes his eyes. His mouth moves a couple times, but he changes his mind about whatever he’s going to say. And then he just sighs.

His head dips. He’s still holding the profiterole with his other hand, and the moment his nose gets near it, he starts sniffing. Peter jerks his head up, looking annoyed, and then his expression melts into something weirdly wistful as he looks at the profiterole, then pops what’s left of it into his mouth.

“Well, all right, far be it for me to fight fate,” he mutters, while Laura looks like she finds this both hilarious and highly disturbing. “Fine, I’ll take the tiramisu and then we can go find Derek.”

“You look okay right now, do I really need to give that up too?” Stiles says, eyeing Peter. When the man stares back at him, Stiles shrugs and deliberately gets to his feet without warning them. So yeah, having them wince and flash throat is kind of an ego-boost. “I mean, this is my final, and now I’ve got to stay up all night remaking it _plus_ saving your asses again, and it’s not like anybody ever—”

“It’s delicious,” Peter says, very quietly. He’s staring at the smushed profiteroles on the ground when Stiles looks back at him. “It’s always been delicious, and I very much appreciate what you’ve done, Stiles. Thank you.”

Stiles blinks. Checks Laura, who looks like this is absolutely convincing evidence that Deucalion is psychologically fucking them over from the grave. “Well…you’re welcome, for once,” Stiles finally says. “Um, well, okay, fine. You can have some tiramisu.”

Peter looks up and smiles at him, and that’s about when Stiles starts wondering whether Deucalion got him, too. Because suddenly he sort of hopes Peter’s not totally a podperson right now. It’d be nice if the guy was actually sincere about thanking Stiles, and looking like that—a lot of people dig Stiles’ baking, sure, but he’s not sure he’s seen anybody that into it since his mom died.

Well, they’re just gonna have to find out, he guesses, and he stalks back into the kitchen, rolling his sleeves back up. “All right,” he mutters. “One recipe for exorcist cake, coming up.”

* * *

Once they throw off Deucalion’s little curse, Peter and his niece and nephew promptly get embroiled in some ridiculous nonsense over a bunch of hunters resurrecting Kate Argent as some kind of martyr to the cause. To be charitable, at the time Chris was not as helpful as he could have been, and so poor John Stilinski hadn’t taken the proper precautions with Kate’s body.

To be frank, Peter’s on the verge of just leaving town and making his own way. Beacon Hills is more trouble than it’s worth, and now that he’s an alpha himself, he can make his own pack. He’s…he’s fond enough of Laura and Derek to not want them dead, but he’s getting very tired of dragging them out of mess after mess. Somehow he’s managed to spend most of his life helping his sister’s children, he thinks, and now he’d just like a little something of his own.

The reason he doesn’t go is that he’s fallen in love. And since his chosen object of affection is firmly rooted in the town, Peter sighs and helps kill Kate—again—and then he matchmakes his niece with John, and sits his nephew down till Derek thoroughly understands how to background-check a potential date (which can all be easily done during a first meeting with a smartphone and a small set of charms, so really, no excuses), so that both of them will be too busy to cause trouble.

He can’t do too much about Scott, unfortunately, so Peter ends up courting Stiles through a series of relatively minor, but very annoying, supernatural crises. He actually _saves_ people who aren’t related to him or who haven’t done something for his family. It’s a little horrifying.

But, he thinks, kissing Stiles over a batch of freshly-assembled opera cakes, it’s worth it.

“You’re not just doing this for the food, right?” Stiles says, groping his way to Peter’s ass. “Or because you want to get me to come over to the wolf side, right, because I keep telling you people—”

“I’m not planning to bite you,” Peter says, and then he nibbles at some chocolate ganache smeared on Stiles’ jaw. “Well, not like that. And no, Stiles, it’s not the food, I’m not some brainwashed little—”

Stiles shoves him against the counter. He accidentally sticks his hand in the opera cakes and the smell alone, God, it’s glory in coffee-scented form. Followed up with a very willing, very eager partner pulling his hand around and then _sucking_ off those bits of cake and ganache, and Peter would growl except that his throat’s already occupied with whimpering.

“It’s not that thing where I keep you sane and not killing everybody, is it?” Stiles says. While kissing Peter again, filling his mouth with silky chocolate and melty cake crumbs.

“And if it is?” Peter groans. He slides his free hand to Stiles’ hip, catching the man when Stiles tries to move back. “It’s not brainwashing, Stiles, and it’s not magic or just gratitude. It’s—it’s that I always tasted it, when I ate your food. I tasted how much you wanted me to be better.”

Stiles is still for a second, looking up at him with strangely solemn eyes. And no, it’s not the food, or this odd magic Stiles has. Those are just the vehicle and what really draws Peter, what’s made him stay and turn his life inside out, is right in that look. In this man.

“Good,” Stiles says. “Because…because I wasn’t really doing it for you most of the time, you know, but I did want—I really wanted it to do something, to help. It’s just baking, but I just thought…maybe someday, somebody will get it.”

“I do,” Peter says. “I certainly do, Stiles. And if you’ll allow me to—”

They start kissing again, and more cake gets smeared around. It gets in some _very_ odd places, and Peter thinks he can smell coffee liqueur on himself for days afterward. And he honestly, sincerely, with every part of himself, hopes that that will just be the start.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Alton Brown devoted an [episode](http://www.foodnetwork.com/shows/good-eats/6-series/choux-shine.html) of his wonderful show _Good Eats_ to choux pastries. You can find most of his episodes on youtube.
> 
> Felicity Cloake of The Guardian [tested tiramisu recipes](http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/wordofmouth/2014/mar/13/how-to-make-perfect-tiramisu) for the world.
> 
> This whole fic dates back to some musings I had about why my Peter invariably ends up loving sweets, and how tempted I was to just rewrite the first two seasons so alpha!Peter gets stopped by Stiles' amazing dessert-making abilities.


	7. +1: Sponge Cake

Stiles gets bitten by an alpha werewolf. It’s not Peter, or Scott, or any of the Hales. Or anyone they know, period. It’s just some rogue alpha running around who caught Stiles coming home late from the seminar he’s TAing, and who got in a lucky bite before Stiles got his taser around. And who’s now six feet deep in the preserve, in very little bits sprinkled over with wolfsbane.

He survives. He doesn’t turn—he’s like Lydia, apparently, not quite human—and he doesn’t lose his magic or anything melodramatic like that, but he ends up with a huge-ass scar on his shoulder that his boyfriend gets increasingly weird about. Actually, Peter was very shitty about the whole thing, beginning to end. Getting in Stiles’ face about why was he not carrying at least a cupcake on him (because undergrads make Stiles hungry, Jesus), muttering about having to research bond severance after they realized Stiles wasn’t going to die _or_ turn and before the Hales just tracked down that alpha and shredded him, just generally being a jerk about what was a pretty traumatic fucking attack.

Stiles kicks the asshole out of their apartment. And then holes up in his kitchen, staring at his pristine counter, his neat jars of flour and sugar, his impressive array of various baking tools.

He doesn’t feel like baking. He can still do it—he and Scott tested this on a werewolf buddy of Scott’s who has control issues—but he just doesn’t…want to. He’s not sure why.

Scott and Allison drop by, trying to make him feel better. Allison offers to shoot Peter. Stiles turns her down, but he manages to crack a smile and that seems to make them feel better. Then Chris comes over, to apologize for Allison but also, to offer to refresh Stiles’ wolfsbane stock, which Stiles also turns down. Derek sends him a very curt text saying _Peter = asshole_ , and it’s probably the nicest thing Derek has ever said or sent to him. Gets Stiles to get up and bake off some muffins to send to his father, who keeps calling to ask how he is but who is dutifully giving Stiles the ‘space’ he asked for.

Stiles goes a week and a half without baking anything else, living on his own, doing classes and working on his research projects and blah blah blah. It’s pretty awful. His goddamn shoulder hurts all the time, even though they said he shouldn’t have permanent muscle or nerve damage. He gets out some recipe cards and goes through the motions of planning out a dessert table, just to try and get the neurons going, but the cards just lie there on the counter.

Cake starts showing up on the doorstep.

Homemade cake. Nothing fancy, just your basic sponge. The first one is super-dry, to the point that cardboard looks moist next to it. The next two are less dry, but they’ve clearly had burnt pieces cut off.

Number four is raw in the middle, and Stiles leaves it on a nearby bench for the squirrels, yellow dough still oozing up from the hole he poked in it.

Number five is moist, but the ratios are off and there’s too much flour that didn’t cook out, so it tastes very bready, in a very bad way.

Six is…acceptable. Stiles eats it, standing in his doorway, and then sighs and stares at the crumb-strewn box in his hands. “You’re an asshole, and yeah, Peter, I know about bite meanings and werewolf behavior and whatever but we are more than instincts and I am not your fucking _mate_. Way to check with me first, you possessive creepy jackass.”

Then he goes inside and shuts the door.

Cake number seven is frosted and decorated. It’s such a giant leap over the previous cakes that Stiles gets his phone out and spends a couple minutes shooting off texts to just check that no baking psycho has come to town while he’s been depressed. Nope, says Scott, but there is some weird chatter in the hunter community and does this mean Stiles is feeling—

Stiles puts his phone away and gets down on his knees with the serving knife, and really looks over the cake. Basic sponge again, but it’s two layers, with raspberry jam in between that’s been properly run through a sieve to catch the seeds. The frosting was done in two stages, with a thin first layer to seal all the crumbs and keep them from marring the outside. Simple vanilla buttercream with honey whipped into it. The cake’s been decorated to look like a scene from his favorite MMORPG, with little figures that have been carved out of chocolate. He can still see claw marks through the icing that’s been brushed on them for clothes.

He picks up the cake and takes it inside, leaving the door open. Thirty minutes later, he and Peter are post-coital on the living room floor, digging into the cake with their fingers.

“I’m sorry,” Peter says again. “I could give you any number of excuses, I suppose, but…I _am_ sorry.”

“Yeah, yeah, you don’t deal with loss well, my baking just makes you think about it a little,” Stiles says. Then he rolls his eyes. “I kind of know you, okay? I knew you were upset, and I knew it wasn’t just about that asshole being the one to chomp me. But—it’s just, did that _have_ to be all you talked about—”

Peter pushes their brows together, purring apologetically, with his head angled a little low so it starts wedging under Stiles’ head. He stops when Stiles grabs his shoulder. Then looks up as Stiles flexes that hand.

“Like I fucking want any crap of that asshole’s in my life, you know?” Stiles says. “I mean, I don’t want to be a werewolf, period, but if I were going to, it’d better be you.”

For some reason Peter looks surprised to hear this. So it’s not like they’ve talked about it, really, but if Stiles can read Peter’s stupid passive-aggressive moves, then he’d think Peter would understand that he _loves_ Scott, loves him, but he’s under no illusions about Scott’s ability to handle him. And that’s just with Stiles as a human.

But no, Peter looks surprised. And then kind of upset, and then…it’s a mix of embarrassed and wistful and maybe, just maybe, a little raw affection. “I was planning to ask you,” he admits. “Not to turn, Stiles, but…there are other reasons to bite people. If he hadn’t done it first.”

Stiles stares at him for a couple seconds. Peter looks sort of defiant, and then uneasy, and then just plain resigned but free of denial. Considering he’s an alpha werewolf and all, he can be weirdly vulnerable.

“That’s a shitty proposal,” Stiles finally says. He swipes some more cake, then gets up and goes to the kitchen. Washes his hands and then reaches for his measuring cups. He hears Peter come up behind him and shoves the flour jar at Peter, so the man can hold it while Stiles dips a cup into it and breaks up butter with his other hand. “So what, I’m damaged goods now?”

“No, hardly. It’s just—I wanted it to be perfect. But that’s nothing to do with you, Stiles,” Peter says quietly.

Stiles resists the urge to roll his eyes, because God, also, his boyfriend is such a _moron_ sometimes. Next time Peter bitches about Derek, Stiles is so bringing this up. “Yeah, well, I don’t want to end up losing an arm so you probably shouldn’t go right in the same place, but I’ve got three other limbs,” he mutters.

Peter stifles one of those odd little noises he sometimes makes around Stiles, all low and tight in his throat and achy like something tugging at Stiles’ gut. “What?”

“Dumbass,” Stiles says. He slaps the lid back on the flour, then gets both hands into the bowl to start scrunching. “If I actually gotta spell it out—so I’m not your mate, okay, but yeah, I’d like to be. If you ever get around to asking. You—”

Luckily, he’s making pie crust, and that barely needs mixing, so it doesn’t suffer when he and Peter have their second round right in the kitchen. The filling does, however, need more attention, so it’s kind of awkward to have Peter kneeling behind him, arms wrapped around his knees and head nuzzling his ass, trying to persuade him into a third round while he chops strawberries.

“Are you actually turning down my stuff?” Stiles finally says.

“Well, I can always get _that_ ,” Peter huffs. 

Stiles smacks him. And then okay, indulges in a quick make-out before dragging Peter off the floor. “Just let me get this in the oven, okay?”

“You have at least three steps left,” Peter says, eyeing the half-filled tin. “That’s a good ten minutes.”

“Well, then you can do one and fill that up while I cut out the top crust,” Stiles says.

Peter blinks. “You…want me to help?”

“You apparently know how to bake now, and oh, my God, are you telling me you’ve just been freeloading this whole time because you didn’t think I wanted help?” Stiles says, yanking his hand back from the dough. “Are you kidding me? Do you think I actually want to bake for an army by myself?”

“Yes?” Peter says. Smiling very smugly, even as he leans in and brushes a kiss over Stiles’ mouth, while on his way to picking up the bowl of pie filling. “I just didn’t want to intrude where I’m not wanted, Stiles. It’s—it’s always been special for you, I can tell that.”

He pauses when Stiles puts his hands on Peter’s waist. Stiles moves back a little, just so he can see Peter’s face, and then deliberately lifts one hand and wraps it around the side of Peter’s neck. Peter trembles a little, his eyes going wide, and then he nearly breaks the bowl, kissing Stiles fiercely.

“Yeah, well, so’s this,” Stiles says, when they break apart. And then he slaps a spoon in Peter’s hand. “So shut up and let me show you already, okay?”

“Always,” Peter says, smiling.

* * *

In some universes, Peter gets increasingly unbalanced and ends up in Eichen House, an excuse for collecting all the disturbed supernatural creatures and making them even more disturbed. Or he gets people killed. Or both.

In some universes, Stiles deals with disaster after disaster, with the death of his classmates and friends, with a life filled with constant danger and violence and loss. He survives, but he doesn’t get to have much fun.

In this universe…they do deal with threats, starting with the weird hunter chatter that turns out to be yet another attempt to wipe out the supernaturally-inclined population of Beacon Hills. But there are three alpha werewolves (to everyone’s relief, including him, Derek lost his status shortly after his and Laura’s long-lost sister Cora turned up), resident hunters, a clued-in sheriff and a couple druids. And Stiles, who has a very unique touch with baked goods.

So this world, it’s a lot tastier.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Victoria Sponge Cake](http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/wordofmouth/2013/may/16/how-bake-perfect-victoria-sponge-cake) from The Guardian's Felicity Cloake.
> 
> Stiles' power isn't in changing how people are (Peter is still kind of a dick), but in giving them that little breather or nudge or whatever for them to get a chance to be their best. Also, while this isn't, strictly speaking, my typical Stiles doms Peter take, he's not exactly subby either. Alpha doesn't necessarily mean never backing down in the wild anyway.
> 
> The other main source of inspiration for this was me marathoning the fifth season of _The Great British Bake-Off_ on Netflix. So much better than Food Network's gross cake sculpturing contests.


End file.
